HELLO FUTURE: Building GPS for the Moon

Speaker 1 (00:07):
When I look up at the stars at night and
I stare at the Moon, I think to myself, Wow,
when I'm up on there, how am I going to
be able to zoom conference back my colleagues on planet Earth.
Hello Future, It's me keV. This is a dispatch from
the Digital Frontier the year twenty twenty six. The planet
is Earth, but one day I might be broadcasting from
the Moon. My name is Kevin's really on, the founder
of MTF dot TVs and Meet the Future. And today
I've got a guest who is really helping the Artemis mission.
Tarn Orbital is the name of the company, and they
are a company that offers spacecraft solutions and how to
create manufacturing of satellite so that we can communicate with
the base on the Moon when it's time to get
up there. And Michael E. Young is the guest and
I caught up with him down at the Big Space
Conference the other week in Orlando, Florida. Take a listen
to our conversation. Michael Jong is with us, and I'm
so grateful to talk to you today because your company
is really one of the most important pieces of glue
in the Artemist mission. And I'm hoping that you can
just explain to us precisely the role that you're playing
in the Artemist mission and why folks should care about it.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yes, and so tarn Noval is, with a partnership with
Advanced Space, we built the Capstone mission satellite, and the
mission for the Capstone is to go out there in
assistlin or orbit that the first of his kind, and
to do advanced position navigation and timing because there are
no GPS satellites in that orbit. And as with the
Artemist mission to pull people on the Moon, we want
to make sure.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
That we have all the details that we have ahead
of time.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
So we're taking pictures, we're taking telemetry, getting all that
again in that advanced position and navigation and timing.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
I guess what I just got in my meet the
future moment was if we're going to set up shop
on the Moon, we need GPS. I mean, I can't
imagine living on Earth without GPS, and so I guess
essentially what you're saying is in order to have a
Moon base, we need to make sure that there's a
GPS system on the Moon so that people are robotics
and whatnot can engage on it is that what.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
You're saying it is. I mean, it's kind of the
first of us kind.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
And again, like you said, as with the Moon base,
you want to make sure that you're able to get
there nowhere things going, You're able to coordinate to logistics
and people, so it's extremely important.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
And then like I said, this is the first of
us kind. So you got your start.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
In the Army, and then now you're helping to essentially
set up the future of America's presence on the Moon.
And in here at the Space Force Association's Power Conference
where I'm interviewing you, I had several key light bulb
moments where especially with satellites and how I was saying
to some one of your colleagues, like people think of satellites.
I don't know what they think, but I thought they
were a lot bigger than they actually are now. I mean,
these things you can hold in both of your hands.
So tell me about the specifics of why these satellites
are so crucial to setting up the future of the Moon.
Put it in like elementary school level terms.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
It is just technology, So you think about how technology advances.
We went from an eight track to a cassette player,
to a CD to DVD, and now we're actually all digital.
It's the same thing in technology with satellites. So originally
we had to have large sillites to produce tech capability.
The technology, as technology advances, that get smaller and smaller,
and so now we're able to do CubeSats, which again
fitnessize your hand. That did the same performance of something
that back in the sixties isemities. You think about your phones,
you think about your laptops, they continue to get smaller,
why not with satellite So that also.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Must mean that they're harder to protect and they're harder
to secure. So let's say that we are successful in
the Artemis missions and that we're able to set up
GPS navigation systems on the Moon, and that we're able
to do all of these things on the Moon. How
do we secure these satellites from bad actors but also
from space weather and from space debris or from I
don't know, like a shooting stars zipping through. How do
we mitigate some of that risk?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well, space is space. There's a lot going on out there.
From the security side, you know, we talk about cybersecurity.
Of course, we want to harden that. You know, we
everybody get to SPAN calls. You know, they're trying to
get your information, they're trying to get into your databases.
So the same thing with the satellites, So we want
to make sure that we shid and harden. There's a
lot of cybersecurity protocols that there's limited gateways, limited access points,
so somebody can come in there and do that. As
far as the environmentals, it's kind of the wild wild list,
so we want to minimize. We know what we know,
but there's always some other things that could be an asteroid,
could be a comic, could be some collateral damage, and
that those cases there really is nothing you can do
to protect against that.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
One of the things I like to do is puzzles,
and so I think if space is the ultimate puzzle,
but I also can't imagine doing a puzzle without knowing
what the vision is of the puzzle. And so as
you're putting satellites and orbit around the Moon and helping
to set up GPS systems for the Moon, what is
like the vision in the back of your mind that's
guiding where you think this is all headed, whether it's
in the next decade or the next thousand years, Like
what is the vision that you're piecing together, the sequencing for.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Which is trying to enable technology and advancement.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
And so, you know, we talk about what we're doing
as a country and then as a society, we're trying
to give telecommunications to every part of the world. There
are certain remote locations that you can't put in an
infrastructure to support that with telecommunications, So the only way
to provide communications to those remote locations is via satellite.
Same thing with the moon. So again it needs some
sort of infrastructure. You can't do it threshoally, So how
do you do it? You do it through space.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Why do you think it's important for us to have
a presence on the moon?

Speaker 2 (05:47):
You know, it's we talk about that, We talk about
you know, China will put it out there. It's kind
of one of those things that who the first one's
out there kind of gets to set the rules. Is
trying to gulb up a lot of infrastructure. They're trying
to kind of make their presence known. If we fail
to do it, Kina is going to do it. If
they could there first, they could set the groundles. I
get that from like national security perspective totally.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
And we talk a lot about that on this program,
but also from an opportunity standpoint of data centers or
mining or all of these other types of launch pads
to go deeper into space and becoming like for science
and research and for health benefits. You know, there are
things that you can do in outer space that you
can't necessarily do from the scientific community here. That I
think is one of the things that gets lost in
a lot of this is just the real world applications.
And not only that, but as you're doing with your
missions and the satellites and they're getting smaller and smaller
and setting up communications, I would imagine that there might
be some applications of that here on planet Earth that
could help folks as well. So that has to also
is something that I think the public doesn't necessarily always
relate to. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 3 (06:52):
No?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
I one Hunderdertand so you think about the rare orth
pinals that's in our cars and our car batteries and
our cell phones.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
There's a finite amount of those.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
So to get that next technology, that next capability we're
looking at, you know, the deep space, what is that advantages?

Speaker 3 (07:06):
There are other minimals, So we talk about space mining.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
So there's minerals on some of these asteroids and things
like that that could replace some of the rare Earth
minerals that we're doing. So instead of tearing the Earth
apart trying to find these rare Earth pinerels, we could
do it in a space where the collateral damage is
very minimal. And so with that we're be able to
jump into different technology talk about quantum being able to
do that in space. All the data centers, data centers
in space. You don't need to have tens of thousands
of acres of land to do a data center here
on the Earth where you could do that in space.
So again we're not raping intelligence the Earth to kind
of put out that tapability.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
See that's what I that's the part of the conversation
that I just I think, just from an inspirational standpoint,
it's just so crucial, and I don't think that the
media has done a really good job explaining this the
way that you just did, which is essentially our ability
to figure out how to set up a GPS system
or community cations based system on the Moon. We can
apply that those same lessons in the future to going
to an asteroid of mining it, or to going to Mars,
or to going to other moons in the universe. But
we don't have that knowledge unless we master that. And
it's like going deeper and deeper and deeper into this
great puzzle that is outer space. So I really appreciate that.
How did you get into space?

Speaker 2 (08:26):
So I, you know, I joined the military, join army.
My first job as a silly communications operator, and so
it's something that I found interesting.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
I'm exciting.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
You know, it's never going to be an astronaut, but
I figured if I can work with sillies, that's kind
of the next best thing. And so when I transitioned
out of the military back in two thousand and nine,
it was just a natural progression over into the shill
and sector doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
But like, so, the military gave you your love of space.
So as a kid, did you watch like Star Trek
or definitely?

Speaker 3 (08:50):
I always ad a for space and science fiction.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Thank you so much for shawing up to meet the future.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Thank you